


Crimson Court

by lanataego



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27475747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanataego/pseuds/lanataego
Summary: There is an inevitable tension between one who tries to save a kingdom and one who needs the death of one to continue living.
Relationships: Grimm/The Pale King (Hollow Knight), The Pale King/White Lady (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 51





	Crimson Court

As a vengefly grows restless at the first trace of decay, the Nightmare's Heart flickered more brightly in Grimm at the rumour of a new kingdom, kindled up from nothing. 

If word was to be believed, the new king was the great Wyrm, transformed anew. It had such a vast form the last time Grimm had crossed its path that he could scarcely imagine what the beast could look like now. An ordinary bug, the rumours said, small, unimpressive in stature, yet his subjects (the lowly dust-crawlers he had landed upon and granted thought) worshipped him.

As Grimm stepped through the palace towards the throne room, bugs constructing and toiling scuttled from his way. How quickly the construction must have begun, for the grand palace to be almost completed.

None dared interrupt his walk through the immaculate white halls. The Wyrm with his intermittent flashes of foresight likely already knew of his arrival, or perhaps had simply heard rumours of a strange spectre surveying the beginnings of his kingdom and assumed the flame would soon follow the smoke.

Under the arch of the throne room door, Grimm paused to admire the carvings on the wall. A crown of four spines, haloed by six stone wings. To think such the creature had a sense of style hidden somewhere within those vast scales! He was not kept waiting there long before his mind knelled with speech that bypassed sound.

**Enter.**

The Wyrm’s projected thought created awe and fear into smaller bugs, who with minds newly formed and malleable assumed a beast that spoke directly into their consciousness must be a god. 

Grimm stepped inside the innermost palace chambers and saw the most radiant bug he had ever laid eyes on. The king was blindingly bright, gowned in pale cloak atop a tall throne. From under a crown of horns, those inscrutable black eyes gazing down at him could be mistaken for none other than those of the Wyrm. Flanking him were two motionless guards with sickles in their claws. Grimm thought it fascinating, and perhaps a touch wonderful.

Grimm bowed. “How small the Wyrm makes itself,” he rasped. “A pleasure to hold your audience once more, my friend.”

The king seemed to consider him with the same crushing gaze that awed smaller minds into obedience.

**Each appearance before Us, more of you is burned away by the parasite god.**

The Wyrm had never been the most charming of conversationalists. It wasn't in a creature like that’s nature, Grimm supposed, to play word games with the little bugs. 

“This form has plentiful time yet,” he said. “A performer has his full hour in the spotlight, do you not agree? Even terribly aging players like you and I.”

Had it not been for the Nightmare's Heart, Grimm would have met the more permanent variety of death a long time ago. With each passing night the ritual drew closer, and the fire inside him smouldered brighter, brightening his eyes and coarsening his voice. He sustained the Heart, and it he; over his lives, the two had become so intertwined that none could differentiate where Grimm began and the Heart ended. 

He straightened and looked about the throne room admiringly. He didn’t exaggerate the action to cause offense - there was no cause for it. The king’s creation was a fine and beautiful craft down to the ornate crowned sigils on the glass and beautifully wrought lumafly lamps.

“A wonderful host you are, dear Wyrm. A fine kingdom you are creating for your subjects.”

 **They shall thrive eternally under Us**.

Grimm thought he might have caught a sharpness to the tone. He felt a private glow of delight at how quick the Wyrm had been to defend. He knew the dismal circumstances in which the Nightmare Troupe would usually visit a kingdom. 

“You wrongly name me a harbinger of doom, your Majesty. Truly, I am here only to see the curtains rise, and to offer my well-wishes to an old friend.”

He extended his claws in offering, and took a sweeping step up up stairs to the throne. In an instant the two white guards previously motionless slung their weapons forward to block his advance. They were fast, and strange. Quicker than an average creature - if they were a creature at all. No eyes, nor fur nor trace of flesh. No smell clung to them. They were entirely dark within. 

_What had the Wyrm been playing with?_

**You will not find the death you seek in Our kingdom** , it thought.

Grimm noted the sharpness of the mechanical sickles, which might if given a chance leave a scratch against even the rough scales of his folded wings. With a show of unfussed politeness, he stepped back.

In the moment of following silence, Grimm realised he could sense a second powerful presence, and turned to face the entrance of the throne room.

"My Wyrm?" A gentle tone reached him. “Who visits us at this hour, unannounced?”

Already facing the archway, Grimm saw the owner of the voice follow.

The vision, flanked by a pale guard was beautiful. A vast white-robed figure of natural origin with serene blue eyes. She stepped delicately for her size, as if treading over the surface of a lake. Not bug or Wyrm, Grimm saw, but Root. From the shaped clasp securing her white cloak, it could be inferred she was not simply a member of the court, but a partner. 

Grimm hadn't thought the old Wyrm had it in him. So far removed from all the business of love and partnerships was he, but even a grand creature like that would need a royal lineage, if a kingdom were to thrive eternally.

“Such burning eyes are foreign to a land such as this,” the Root said. “You must hail from far away.”

There was a moment of silence as the king projected words for her mind alone. Grimm could envision their sharp summations; _"...Scarlet heart… long ago… master… misfortune…unwelcome..."_

Grimm vanished in a plume of smoke to reappear at the lady's feet. “Charmed to meet you. I am Grimm, Master of the Grimm Troupe.”

She allowed him to take her forelimb, and he bowed to press the flat chitin of his head to her skin.

“An auspicious match the two of you make."

“The Kingdom of Hallownest has no need of a being of your like.” the root spoke. “I acknowledge your compliments as sincere, and would not deny you temporary shelter in our home, but a welcome outstayed is good as none.”

"I travelled to wish good fortune to the both of you. Your king and I go back a very long time. And, such a wonderful name you give your stage! Hallownest, did you say? I am sure your kingdom will last a thousand lives.”

It was the look in the king’s eyes that Grimm could not forget from that moment on; uncertainty. Uncertainty! _In the Wyrm, the most unhesitating of beasts!_

He did not acknowledge what he had witnessed, but knew in an instant that he must return once more, if only to see why.

"The pleasure has been all mine," he said, and believed it to be true.

*

When Grimm returned to Hallownest, he swept past the palace guards, flattening himself amongst the grey shadows of the white walkways. The bugs below did not notice his presence; on his first arrival, he had merely moved in plain sight to be polite. Grimm believed sneaking about in the dark was a role reserved almost entirely for those afraid of a spotlight.

Tonight was an exception.

With the queen away in her gardens, the king was sure to be alone in his dark workshop, lit from above by a single ailing lumafly.

Grimm saw the form bent bowed over the workbench. The king's bright claws were coated in something inky and dark as he sealed two halves of a pale shell. He worked precisely and without emotion, weighing material in his claws before affixing it in place. Another of those empty toys.

The king paused his work. Had he sensed his entrance?

Grimm leaned in with interest.

The king turned in an instant. A lance of sharp light cracked into the wall where Grimm had been just a moment before. Any creature slower than a god by even fraction of a second would have been pierced cleanly through the thorax. In the king's outstretched claws, a second shard of light glowed.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

The Wyrm willed away the weapon and lowered his claws.

**Nightmare King** **_._ **

A perfunctory bow. "Your Majesty."

Grimm looked over the workbench. So much of it was blackened with that strange, lightless substance. Seeing it laid bare, he remembered where he had seen such a material before. It filled the deepest caverns, consuming and disastrous to any bug foolish enough to touch it. It held a terrible power but no mind of its own.

**You insist on returning here. Why?**

"I give you my word, hastening the end of a kingdom is a tragedy I take no delight in. Surely it has not evaded your notice that there is a strangeness in your kingdom’s air. I am here for no reason other than to sate curiosity, and bid my goodbye. ”

He didn't speak a lie. Grimm did not murder kingdoms; he simply danced on their graves.

When the king did not respond, Grimm continued; “It appears you are running out of time.”

**Remain silent. The future is Ours to remedy.**

It was marvellous to face the Wyrm with equal forms. Grimm had never before considered the Wyrm as something capable of anger on any personal level, for all bugs were the same from so high up. However, it was a long held secret of those who changed shape that the mind was shaped just as keenly by the form, if not more so, than the reverse. 

Before him was not truly the Wyrm, but a Wyrm who had become a king. The difference was slight and subtle, perhaps even indistinguishable to nearly all, but here was another well known secret; a single fray might unravel even the most perfect spool.

"I’m fascinated by the prophecy your foresight brings," said Grimm. "Famed for my performance, yes, but a lesser known skill of mine - I am an excellent audience. Would you share the future with me?”

Oh, Grimm knew fear and nightmares and darkness. The king thought his brilliant white visage impervious to those peering in, but Grimm had a deeper vision than most. He saw, somewhere in those dark eyes, a nightmare. 

Grimm loomed over the king, eyes burning and wide.

If the bug before him had not once been a Wyrm, he would have flinched away from the direct red gaze of a god, for now even the Nightmare's Heart was looking. The king met those red eyes immovably as the Heart grasped into his mind, searing in its path to know all and steal away memory.

The backlash Grimm felt was like a sharp spear of light. 

**OUR BURDEN IS OURS ALONE.**

**YOU SHALL NOT PRY.**

**YOU WILL NOT GAZE.**

But he had already seen what it was that frightened the Wyrm so. 

_It was blazing like a fire and tore through the minds of weak creatures. Resolve, Dedication, Desperation, all in monstrous proportion._

_The old god still lived. Dormant, but not dead._

The trouble for all new rulers was ensuring the proper disposal of the old. He had, in his memories, seen it all before; what you could not destroy would end a civilization. A godly mind like that could not be reasoned with - Grimm knew this more than anyone.

The one intertwined with him did not demand the lives of many. Enough to fuel the fire, certainly, enough to repeat the ritual, and some even signed themselves away to the Troupe of their own volition, but the Nightmare Heart in itself was not spiteful; only self preserving. The god that loomed here would tear apart first the mind, and unable to sate herself, followed with the body.

Grimm had not truly entertained the thought being the last of the two of them left, but now, it seemed certain. The Wyrm could have abandoned it all; once upon a time, it might have. This was a new creature entirely. The cloying smell of death clung not just in the caverns of the kingdom, but to its ruler.

As Grimm left the gleaming palace, he considered all that he was leaving behind.

 _How far shall you go down your path to protect this kingdom of yours, King of Hallownest?_

The glimpse inside had already answered for him. It was to the very end of the dark road down, no matter the cost.

*

The tent rose as Grimm had long awaited, high above the deep city filled with sweet stinking infection. It swelled in the corpses of the King’s enlightened citizens like ripe fruit.

This, surely, was the vision that had haunted the Wyrm’s dream, just as the old god had haunted those of his citizens. 

Had it all been worth it, for the singular moment of sureness that the arduous path was the right one?

Grimm smiled at the pale creature that approached him. He could not help it: for all its empty eyes, the resemblance between father and child could not be more clear.

Grimm bowed. The stage lit.

 _A wonderful craft,_ Grimm thought. _Foolish, dear Wyrm._


End file.
